Peter Freese, Conference Director
Hidden Path Entertainment, Lead Programmer

Peter Freese is currently Lead Programmer at Hidden Path Entertainment, and Conference Director and visionary for the Online Game Development Conference (OGDC). He has been programming computers for over 30 years, and wrote his first compiler and graphics library before the age of 15.

Peter entered the games industry in the early 1990s, much to his great surprise and immense satisfaction. After developing several award-winning educational games for Edmark, including Thinkin’ Things, Peter co-founded Q Studios in 1994 and led development on the campy 3D shooter Blood, which launched publisher Monolith into the spotlight. After developing the graphics engine behind Sierra Studio’s final adventure game, Gabriel Knight 3, Peter joined the Ultima Online 2 team at Origin Systems in order to learn all the joys and trials of MMP game development. In 2001, Peter formed the Core Technology & Tools team at NCsoft North America, where he directed development on all shared technology to support Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes, and Lineage II. In 2005, Peter co-founded MMO development company Secret Lair Studios, which was acquired by Vivendi Entertainment in 2006 under their newly reformed Sierra Online.

Peter joined Hidden Path Entertainment in 2007, and is currently lead programmer on an unannounced PS3 project.

John De Margheriti
CEO, BigWorld Pty Ltd

John is a true entrepreneur, visionary and one of the most motivated and passionate people in the Australian Game Development Industry. In 1985 John co-founded Micro Forté, an Australian Game Development Studio that has just recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Towards the end of 1999 he saw an opportunity within the online game market for a definitive MMOG middleware solution which was successfully developed and spun out as BigWorld.  This well-known company now has a world wide game developer base and a global focus with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, USA, Sydney and Canberra. The BigWorld Technology solution will be seen in such titles as Netease’s ‘Tian Xia 2’, with many more titles in development in the US, Europe and Asia.  John is also the founder and Chairman of the Academy of Interactive Entertainment Ltd (AIE), Canberra Technology Park (CTP), Canberra Business Parks (CBP) and the Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC). The AIE has gained much recognition for being Australia’s premier Registered Training Organisation for the Computer Game Development and 3D Digital industries.  In December 2005, John announced the closing of Australia’s most successful and well known Game Developers Conference to provide the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) an opportunity to run an industry conference. John founded the GDAA in 1999 at the inaugural AGDC and acted as one of its main financial backers and treasurer until late 2005 when he resigned from the board to focus his energies on expanding BigWorld Pty Ltd.

Dana Hanna
Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Game Studios

Sometime in the early 1990s, Dana discovered that some people would actually pay her to produce and design games.  She’s spent the fifteen or so years since taking advantage of this lunacy.  Her experience ranges from CD-i to Xbox 360, from downloadable casual to massively multiplayer, and from software for your robot dog to first-person shooters.  She’s shipped titles more titles than she can remember for a variety of publishers, including Electronic Arts, Sony, and soon, Microsoft.

Dana specializes in the business, development, and community aspects of online multiplayer games across all platforms and genres.  She’s currently the lead program manager on Microsoft’s Shadowrun, the first Xbox 360 game to feature head-to-head cross-platform play between PC and Xbox 360 players, due out later this year.

Kristina Hudson
enterpriseSeattle

Kristina Hudson joins enterpriseSeattle as the newest Case Manager specializing in Technology. In 2004, Kristina established the Washington Interactive Media Program. This was the first economic development program in the United States to be targeted solely at the game industry. As founder, Kristina brings this program to enterpriseSeattle.

Guided by a strong industry task force, Kristina works to promote, nurture, and grow the interactive media and technology industries in the Seattle area. By working with the print and television media, she helps to raise the awareness of the local industry. Early successes include articles in the LA Business Journal, the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Chinese Game Developer Magazine, and local television news stories. In the last couple of years, Washington State’s industry has grown to over 150 interactive media companies.

Rich Weil
Community Relations Director, Kaneva

Prior to officially joining the game industry in 2004, Rich worked in Human Resources and Management for many years, including as HR Director for a software development consultancy in Austin, TX. An MMO enthusiast since 1996, Rich is a consistent advocate of new and creative ways to engage and support the online gaming community, as well as being a proponent of Community Relations as a distinct discipline within the gaming industry. At NCsoft, Rich managed the Community Relations teams for City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lineage, Lineage II, Tabula Rasa, PlayNC and Auto Assault.

Currently, Rich is the Community Relations Director at Kaneva, a social networking and game development company in Atlanta, Georgia.

Zhan Ye
Editorial Director, China GC Networks

Zhan Ye is an interaction designer, writer, academic, and entrepreneur. Zhan began his career in China’s digital entertainment industry in 1995 and was one of China’s first-generation game developers. An influential writer, he has published numerous articles on many Chinese magazines exploring technical, economical, social and cultural issues related to digital entertainment and media. In 2003 he co-authored Game Design and Development: Theory and Practice, the first book written in Chinese language on game creation. Zhan co-founded and serves on the editorial board of Game Creation magazine, the first game developer magazine in China.

Zhan Ye is a China advocate. Through his articles and lectures, he is actively helping the rest of the world understand China’s new market landscape, especially its digital entertainment sector. He has given lectures at various industry events such as GDC, INET, CHI and ChinaJoy.

Zhan Ye received a Master's Degree in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology and a Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from Carnegie Mellon University.